


A Maximoff Memorial

by justanothernerdgirl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers being supportive, Canon Jewish Character, F/M, Grief, Jewish Character, Jewish Comics Day, Judaism, Loss, you don't have to be Jewish to read but it helps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7107346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothernerdgirl/pseuds/justanothernerdgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda finds time to remember Pietro in her first year with the Avengers as she settles into New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Maximoff Memorial

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr for Jewish Comics Day. After the antisemitic abuse of Magneto's storyline in Xmen: Apocalypse and Hydra Cap, representation has never been more important.

When Pietro dies in May, there is hardly time to grieve. Wanda cries sometimes randomly throughout the summer, picking up her guitar and playing something he used to like, but then she is often forced to return to training, crises, and Stark’s latest mishugana plan. She doesn’t mind the big stuff, but she’s alone in a million small ways. 

The rest of the team assumes she’s going for ambiance when she lights the candles on Friday nights and she doesn’t correct them. She already feels different enough. It’s easy to disappear on Rosh Hasanah and Yom Kippur, step into the back of a synagogue, and sit there until everyone else has left. In the synagogue, her accent is mirrored in the tones of the bubbes in front of her and she loves to listen to them talk after services about their grandchildren just to hear the familiar cadence. 

Clint finds her lying on the roof on Sukkot. Even with her powers, she worries about constructing a Sukkah in the middle of New York City, but she decides to spend the night looking at the stars. He approaches quickly at first, thinking she’s injured by the way she’s trembling on the ground, tears down her cheeks. But soon he finds she’s lonely. She sits up when she notices his presence and he joins her on the ground. He wraps a jacket around her shoulders, it’s October in New York after all, and they talk. 

“Shit, Wanda, you should have said,” Clint tells her, his hands expressively waving around as he talks, like they too might have powers attached. 

“I didn’t want to bother anybody. Back in Sokovia, we practiced quietly, you know? It wasn’t a secret, but we didn’t want anybody making trouble either. During Sukkot we would go into the country and build a sukkah and lie in it all night. Mame would cook all day and we’d have a picnic. Pietro would always shake the lulav in my face. I used to get so mad…” she trailed off with a small giggle, then a sigh. “Those candles on Friday night? Those are Shabbos candles. That’s why I will not let them burn out.” 

Clint looks at her for a moment and then nods in understanding. She’d always been weirdly protective of them. Now he knows why. 

“So do you keep kosher or something? Should I stop making bacon in the morning? Because I have to tell you, I’m fine with it, but you might have to explain it to some of the guys,” he smiles at her, holding levity in his voice but looking at her with a sweet protectiveness. She smiles at the thought of him fighting Rhodey or Thor for her honor.

“No. We were not as observant as we could have been. But we kept the holidays. It was important to us. My grandmother…she escaped the war with numbers on her arm. Met my zeyde in Sokovia while looking for her parents. They were…not so lucky,” Wanda paused, taking in a deep breath of air and letting it out slowly. Subconsciously, she started moving the leaves on the roof gently around them. “They wanted to come here, ironically, but they had heard America had stopped taking people in and they decided to rebuild. But they always kept a suitcase packed in the closet and they stored food around the house like the apocalypse was coming”.

Clint just sat silently. His family had a boring immigration story comparatively. They had bought the farm in the 1800s that his family now lived on. He could see this was the missing piece to Wanda, the thing that made her make sense. 

“Are you happy you’re here now?” he asks, curious as to how she truly felt about the transition. There wasn’t much home for her to return to if she wasn’t, but he felt he owed it to her brother to make sure she was happy here.

“Yes and no. I finally understand their fear. I’m afraid what will happen if others do not stop fearing me.” 

“We will never let anything happen to you.” He puts his arm around her as he says that, holding her tight to show how much he meant his promise. 

“Thank you,” She leans her head on his shoulder.

“So I guess this means we’re celebrating Hanukkah. I’ve never learned how to spin a dreidel. But how different can it be after all? Still just aerodynamics. I bet I can beat Stark out of a few bucks.” He relished the sound of Wanda’s laugh. 

-

Hanukkah came and went. Vision helped her cook latkes. Clint did, in fact, beat Stark at driedel and Stark in turn tried to suggest strip driedel to spice it up. Cap stepped in. He had drawn the line at a Christmas tree with lasers. He was mostly there to keep them all alive which backfired weeks later when Stark took Purim way too seriously and the Avengers found themselves drunk in ridiculous costumes on an island with little memory of how they had gotten there other than a map drawn on the back of a child’s megillah. Vision helped cook for Passover, finding “formulas” for a cookie that wasn’t completely depressing. 

And then May came. By this time, Clint has become almost eerily proficient at showing up with exactly what she needs exactly when she needs it. The night of May 5th, they sit by the window in her room and light a Yahrzeit candle he brought her. 

Yizkor Elohim Nishmas aboh mori Pietro ben Magda sheholach l’olomo ba-avur shebli neder etayn tz’dokoh ba-ado biz’char zeh t’hay nafsho tz’ruroh bitz’ror hachayim im nishmas avraham Yitzhak v’yaakov sarah rivkah Rachael vlayoh vim shor tzadikim vtzidkoniyos shebgan ayden vnomar Omayn. 

She says the prayer slowly and rhythmically, pronouncing each word as if it were something special. Her accent gave the already foreign sounding Hebrew an extra lilt that he finds charming and though neither of them called him on it, both noticed Vision also standing at the edge of the room just to listen to her recite it. 

“I assume we can’t blow this one out either?” Clint asked.

Wanda shook her head. “My mother used to say that Yahrzeit is the one day of the year the soul gets to travel freely. When it sees the candle, it knows it’s loved and takes some of its warmth. The flame reminds me that Pietro was once alive and strong and the flickering reminds us that life is fragile and temporary. Someday I will see him again.” 

Clint takes her hand and looks back at the door Vision had let himself through. “Well get over here and comfort her then if you’re going to be eavesdropping”. 

Vision had the decency to look ashamed for a moment before walking over and taking her into his arms. 

-

The next evening, the three of them try to slip out silently. Which, of course, never worked. Steve caught them five feet from the front door. 

“and where are you going this evening?” he asks with a tight smile, his arms folded over his chest. Wanda kept her eyes fixed on the floor. “What’s going on?” 

“We’re going out for the night, Captain. We’d appreciate if you would step aside.” Vision demands, polite as ever. Wanda burrows into him a little, already overwhelmed by everything around her.

“Can I come with?” Cap responds, clearly trying to read them as if they were the enemy. Wanda lets out a long sigh. She reaches into Clint’s coat pocket, grabs a piece of fabric, and throws it at him. 

“Fine, but you’ll need this then,” she tells him, muttering something about zlidne goyim before pulling Vision past him. “We’re going to be late.” 

Clint watches Cap turn the piece of cloth over and over, his smirk growing until Cap growls at him and he smugly explains the yarmulke and pins it to Steve’s hair. Once it’s on, Steve starts to recall some of the boys wearing it in his old neighborhood and the butcher who always wore fringes that hung out from under his clothes. Embarrassed, he refrains from asking any more questions and follows them six blocks to the nearest synagogue. 

They sit in the back. Vision regards the affair with a scholarly interest but Cap and Clint fidget most of the time. Wanda doesn’t mind though. For the first time in a year, she starts to feel the warmth of family again. It’s a relief so restoring she almost says shehecheyanu in the middle of the Aleinu. Instead, she settles for being present in these moments. She stands up during the mourner’s kaddish and chants:  
Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba.  
B'alma di v'ra chirutei,  
v'yamlich malchutei,  
b'chayeichon uv'yomeichon  
uv'chayei d'chol beit Yisrael,  
baagala uviz'man kariv. V'im'ru: Amen.  
Y'hei sh'mei raba m'varach  
l'alam ul'almei almaya.  
Yitbarach v'yishtabach v'yitpaar  
v'yitromam v'yitnasei,  
v'yit'hadar v'yitaleh v'yit'halal  
sh'mei d'kud'sha b'rich hu,  
l'eila min kol birchata v'shirata,  
tushb'chata v'nechemata,  
daamiran b'alma. V'imru: Amen.  
Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya,  
v'chayim aleinu v'al kol Yisrael.  
V'imru: Amen.  
Oseh shalom bimromav,  
Hu yaaseh shalom aleinu,  
v'al kol Yisrael. V'imru: Amen.  
Some of the ladies in the synagogue look at her curiously, some with pity, but most congregants simply look at the rabbi or at their own fringes, their talits, as they wrap themselves deep in prayer. 

As the service ends, Wanda returns her prayer book to the shelf and is caught in a conversation with one of the women she had seen discussing her latest grandson’s marriage. 

“Excuse me,” she says, placing her hand gently over Wanda’s, “are you new here?” She kindly refrains from mentioning the kaddish. 

“Yes. I moved here just a year ago. It’s my brother’s yahrzeit.” She smiles sadly and the woman holds her hand a little tighter. The woman’s husband comes up beside her.

“Where are you from, dear? Your accent sounds just like my mother’s.” He smiles at her. 

“Sokovia.” She heard them gasp and withdrew her hand quickly. Cap came up behind her instinctively. 

“I’m sorry. It’s just…those awful attacks. We had no idea. Redstu Yiddish?” The man asks quickly, as if trying to make up for his lost ground. 

“Yo, a bisele,” she replied, remembering her own grandmother’s sharp tongue and quick wit as she speaks their language for the first time in so long. 

“Gut! So rare for kids these days.” 

“My bubbe used to speak it to me. She said it was the only thing they couldn’t take from her during the war.” 

“That’s very true! I was on the other side of it.” 

“Where did you serve?” Cap asks, intruding into the conversation for the first time. 

“59th Infantry.” 

“I was with the 51st.” 

“You’re young enough to be my grandson! Don’t you be mocking me, son. Those were some bad men we fought and in tougher conditions than you could ever dream! This is why you marry Jewish, young lady, instead of bringing gut far gornisht goyim to temple with you.” 

Wanda puts her hand over her mouth trying to contain laughter at Captain America’s wide eyes and frantic explanations while the altacocker continues his spiel. Eventually, he got the man to come around with the help of Vision and Clint and soon occupies half the synagogue’s congregants in conversation about war stories. Meanwhile, the ladies took Wanda aside and invited her to women’s groups and Shabbat dinners. Though there was the odd comment about the length of her hemline or her goyische boyfriend, she felt oddly at home in the circle of yentas. 

When she and Cap finally make their exits, Cap to the promises of invitations for beers and Wanda to promises of meetings with Jewish men because “that blonde hair and blue eyes might be cute now, honey, but it’s no use for raising children”, Vision and Clint have been sitting on the steps outside for twenty minutes. It had taken that long for Cap to finally pull her out. She started throwing him desperate glances at the third mention of an eligible son. She kissed Clint on the cheek and Vision on the lips. If the women only knew. 

“Thank you,” she said to them, “you have all been so wonderful to me. I don’t know how I would have survived all this without you. And you, Cap, were like my own golem tonight! I appreciate the rescue.” 

“What’s a golem?” he asked, confused and yet flattered. 

“It’s a beloved folktale about a clay giant who comes to rescue the Jewish people.” Vision explained factually. Cap stood a little taller. 

Clint must have noticed because he quickly added, “Don’t take it too literally, Cap. He dies at the end.” 

Cap deflated a little, pushing Clint to the side of the sidewalk as they begin to walk home. Clint will give her shit for weeks about her “marriage prospects”, Vision will do his best to learn Yiddish for her, and Tony will try to get the hora started every two spare moment because she made the mistake of teaching him. But life will settle down eventually until one day they hardly even notice the Shabbos candles or extra holiday dinners anymore. And it’s T’challa’s turn to teach them something new. 

But for now, Wanda hangs a mezuzah outside her door. She finally decided this is a place she could call home.


End file.
